Caught In The Sun
by Spelljammer
Summary: Summary: AU. Bruce Wayne never became the Dark Knight. This doesn't stop a certain green haired from disrupting the natural order of things. Slash. J/B. Slightly movie based.


Caught In The Sun

Disclaimer: Batman and related characters belong to DC comics. This is not for profit work.

Summary: AU. Bruce Wayne never became the Dark Knight. This doesn't stop a certain green haired from disrupting the natural order of things. Slash. J/B. Slightly movie based.

Warning: Slash (m/m content) profanity, violence. The rule of fanfiction: don't like the content don't read and complain about it.

Note: For a friend. It's a blend of The Dark Knight and some of the iconic graphic novels for Batman and my specialty AU spin.

The Man Who Laughs

Six o'clock in the morning was not a safe time for Gotham City. It could be said that there was no truly safe time in Gotham now. The once glorious city was now a haven for the most sadistic, mentally unstable scum of the entire North American continent. The only way Gotham kept functioning as a city is that once a month a random super hero such as Superman or the Flash would do a massive sweep then would go their own way again. It was called Trash Day by the citizens and usually the day after would be a sort of mini-holiday like First of the Month payday, or a three day weekend.

Six o'clock in the morning is exactly when Bruce Wayne found himself walking towards the Gotham City courthouse with some important documents in hand. He was to broker a deal with both Commissioner Gordon and the District Attorney Harvey Dent both friends of his family and himself personally. The deal was to provide a donation to Gotham's way overworked police force with some rather extreme and sophisticated firepower without making it seem like Wayne Enterprises was privatizing the Gotham City police force (which is what basically what the deal amounts to).

Bruce will go over the details with the two men in his father's stead. He trusted Bruce's judgment and thought it would be good taste to see if his son could handle even more delicate matters.

Bruce knew he could wheel and deal with the best of them but he wasn't sure if private negotiations with family owned megacorpations were the best path...even if nearly all sides told him it was matter of survival.

When the day broke in Gotham with sun almost peeking over the horizon it gave a sickly brown orange glow to the ever present overcast smog sky. Bruce took a quick glance at his surroundings.

_Pushing my luck to do this but..._

Normally, he'd go by car anywhere especially during such early hours but the courthouse was really a stone's throw away from his own condo that he lived in after moving from his parents place at Wayne Manor. All he needed to do was cross a couple of streets, pass the very familiar, very safe family restaurant and bookstore...

_Dad would really, really pop me a new one..._

...and walk through Gotham City Park a.k.a "The Green Badlands", right to the steps of the courthouse.

_Harvey will especially get all big brother like on me if he finds out. Serves him right to worry, spends all his free time with me while he's fucking Rachel on the side._ Not that Bruce was bitter about the issue or constantly going round and round who he was more loyal to in the end (slightly tilting towards Harvey, almost could come to a coin toss if Bruce felt like it) as he crossed the second street and made his way into the park.

"Here we go." Bruce announced to himself as he walked into the seemingly innocent looking park. The surface only reflected a distorted image of the true nature of the park.

There were no joggers, no city workers cleaning the trash or the typical immigrant workers that did the landscaping. The stench of feces and urine both human and animal filled the air with an warm, rotting scent. Dead animal carcasses were found here and there. Some squirrels, a pigeon or two, even a dead cat.

There is stark, bloody evidence that some of the dead animals were consumed as food that the homeless people scavenged on.

Bruce winced as he stepped on a broken glass pipe. This was just too much even for the inner city! He'd have to bring up a strong suggestion to Commissioner Gordon and the Gotham City Council to have a camera system saturating all the streets downtown like they did in some other metropolitan areas.

As Bruce walked around the corner he felt an object fly pass him and hit a nearby tree. As he turned around he noticed there was knife embedded into the tree bark. Bruce immediately looked around to see who threw it but no one was there.

Stray bullets were one thing, but stray _knives_?

He began to run down the sidewalk for a mile and a half but the sound of...flying, sharp, objects...made him halt as several knives were sticking out of the sidewalk, a trash can, and even a "Keep Our Park Clean" sign.

There was someone laughing at him. A hoarse sounding laugh filled with cruel amusement.

_Fuck this._

Bruce grabbed the knife that was sticking out of one of the cracks in the sidewalk.

"I'd like to see you laugh when they send you to the ER!"

The laughing got even more maniacal, with a distinct touch of genuine joy in the mix.

"Knock it off!" Bruce yelled as he made his way through the park. He estimated that he was about one-third into the park so he hustled some more. Bruce had thought about getting his cell phone out but didn't want his throat or the back of his neck the new resting place for a throwing knife. He made a break for it again as he sprinted across the park cursing himself for ever thinking he could actually walk outdoors in fucking Gotham City and not get harassed or assaulted.

Bruce made a note of his surroundings as he ran and notice the trees were shifting here and there as he made his way through the park. Unless there were monkeys or flying squirrels he didn't know about Bruce assumed there was somebody hopping from tree to tree.

_God, I hope this ass is not some kind of metahuman._

There were a few more twists and turns as Bruce reached the park's halfway point. When he approached the public restrooms (which he would be damned before he entered in them alone) he noticed the path was littered with broken toys such as a smashed See and Say, a dismantled jack in the box, yo-yo without a string, slinky toys that have been straightened out.

It was a chaotic mess, one that Bruce didn't have time to ponder over as he was trying to get out of the park alive. He made his way through the debris and wreckage he saw a strange sight. Off to the side was the usual graffiti tagged park bench, but who was on the park bench was another matter entirely.

"Er..." What could he say? Hey, Mister watch out there's a drive by stabbing? Upon closer inspection in the darkness of the dawn the stranger was rather hard to describe.

Stretched out fully as if he were king of everything sat a man whose personal style that could only be described as post-Heatherette look by way of _Pagliacci. _He had this grotesque, haphazard looking clown make up on with the white paint crumbling off and red lipstick just smeared on his lips and most of the lower part of his face. At least some of it looked like lipstick anyway. It looked like scar tissue. His punk green hair was unkempt and greasy and he had on a clashing purple and green vest and tie. He was either coming back from a midnight tea party or he was a homeless bum.

At the moment, he was just sitting there causally shuffling a deck of cards. Bruce clutched the knife he grabbed from the sidewalk. Even though this guy was far ahead of him, instinct said that this was the knife thrower.

"Warriors come out to play!" he sang in an horrid pitch. Bruce gritted his teeth. Definitely the guy who was laughing at him. "Warriors come out to pla-aay!"

"Your taste in movies is shit."

"Says the smart guy who got the reference!"

"What the hell do you want? I'm busy and don't have time for highway robbery." Bruce angrily replied at being called out. He also put up quite a tough front.

"What do I want? What do I WANT? Dunno. Everything I want, I've been getting lately. Whenever I want something, I take it, I use it then I toss it out...don't you walk away from me Uptown Boy!" The demented guy threw another knife at Bruce when he tried to take off and Bruce rather skillfully blocked the projectile with his briefcase.

"Either rob me or get the hell out of my way. Stop playing around." The colorful clown faced man sprung up from the bench leaving his cards behind.

"Why so serious? Everything else, and I do mean _everything _else lost its shine a long time ago. When someone shiny and new comes along I have to play with it. It's the law, you know." At this point, the clown invaded Bruce's personal space. In a deep, aggressive tone he asked "Wanna see a trick?"

"No thanks, I use a service."

"Cute."The clown chuckled and rather crudely felt up Bruce's rear end. The Wayne heir had enough and swiped at the clown with the knife. He dodged the multiple stab attempts and managed a slight of hand which revealed a Joker card. A second slight of hand revealed another knife and the two got into a knife fight. "I haven't gone dancing in ages especially with such a charming young man! Makes a guy feel real good about himself!" He spoke as he dodges, parries and thrusts each movement to the death without a care.

"Who the hell ARE you?" Bruce yelled as he continued his assault.

"The one whom you just had up the ass, introducing The Joker!" He said as he tossed the Joker card at Bruce, he dodged it and it was good that he did as it was razor sharp. Bruce dived and swept The Joker off his feet then very deftly snatched his briefcase and took off running.

"Be seeing you around, gorgeous!!"

"Fuck you!!"

"Maybe if you ask nicely, Uptown Boy!!" The Joker just laid there on the ground as he let the guy go. The Joker watched as the overcast sky slowly got brighter and brighter.

_That felt good. First time in a long while I didn't kill someone and it feels good. Better go raise some hell just to see if it's a fluke or not. I'll definitely look this guy up in the future though. _The Joker did a sleight of hand (on reflex) with a something that he stole from Bruce.

His business card.

_Bruce Wayne, huh? Yep, Joker's going wild!_


End file.
